jaydreb

They got the results back on the same day as the test?

Yep. I may have mentioned that my sister and her family had confirmed cases of coronavirus back in March and have since recovered. My sister and her husband volunteered to donate plasma to Mt. Sinai hospital as part of their antibody treatment study. The first step in that process was an antibody test. They both tested positive for antibodies. My sister’s antibody titer level was 80. Her husbands was 960! Since the threshold for donating is 320, only he is eligible to donate. The interesting thing is that he barely had any symptoms other than loss of taste/smell My sister was pretty sick for a few days, but still had a pretty mild case all things considered My sister of course has not been able to get any answers as to whether she might have immunity, whether her antibody levels could increase, whether she has any less immunity than her husband, etc. The test results also had the disclaimer you mentioned about other coronaviruses. In this case we know they had the coronavirus because of a positive coronavirus test.

Those are actually major caveats. We don’t know how reliable these antibody tests are. It’s possible that they are picking up on antibodies from other coronaviruses. We also don’t know whether the presence of antibodies (and what level of antobodies) confers immunity and, if so, for how long.

At the very least they better get planning whatever changes they need to make, whether it be use of masks, social distancing, staggered attendance, etc.

I’m starting to think that there’s not going to be school in the fall either.

It’s not an easy read, but Harvard scientists have put together a detailed plan for reopening. "Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience: Massive Scale Testing, Tracing, and Supported Isolation (TTSI) as the Path to Pandemic Resilience for a Free Society," lays out how a massive scale-up of testing, paired with contact tracing and supported isolation, can rebuild trust in our personal safety and re-mobilize the U.S. economy. Among the report’s top recommendations is the need to deliver at least 5 million tests per day by early June to help ensure a safe social opening. This number will need to increase to 20 million tests per day by mid-summer to fully re-mobilize the economy. For a video explanation of the Roadmap, see Vi Hart's video "How We Reopen" on YouTube. https://ethics.harvard.edu/files/center-for-ethics/files/roadmaptopandemicresilience_updated_4.20.20_0.pdf

Correct. The virus will be endemic to the US until there is a vaccine. Our ability to prevent another major outbreak will be dependent on our efforts to contact trace.

Well, if you believe Dr. Fauci we’re going to deal with it with increased testing, contact tracing and better therapeutics.

It’s like winter. The good stuff is always two weeks away.

The IMHE model has been updated and puts us at 145 deaths on May 15 FWIW.

Birx on TV saying that she is seeing improvement across all large metro areas.

I hear you. And it’s really hitting me that now, at age 45, I’m no longer in the young category that I’ve considered myself to be part of my whole life.

So terrible. I go back and forth between being non-chalant and being terrified of this virus.

The federal gov’t tried to do it with the Phasing and gating system. The problem is that they are simply guidelines and it seems some states will just be ignoring them.

What do they do about all the people showing up to the hospitals though?

Agreed that it will take a few weeks to see it, but reopening will for sure lead to new cases. It’s simple math and Fauci said as much. There is simply no way to avoid new cases and have any kind of meaningful reopening. The big question is whether the state is able to contact trace and manage the new cases so as to avoid widespread community spread.

Seems ridiculous. The only thing I can see is that massages (and haircuts) are just very few people in a room. Although they will obviously be close together, it won’t be a large gathering, and sanitizing between visits shouldn’t be impossible to do. Gyms seem a little more problematic since it is dozens of people touching things and hard to sanitize.

I’m not defending it. I don’t really know enough about the situation there one way or the other. I think we should be careful about assuming that all things have to be fully open or fully closed. There can be a middle ground.

But that is for MD, right? I don’t really know GA’s data but it looks like their daily deaths have dropped off dramatically in the last week.

I don’t understand. I thought I recall you saying that you thought things would be reopening in May. This is a few days short of May.

The headline doesn’t mention that these businesses can only open with specific health precautions and social distancing mandates. The tweet seems to imply that these business are fully open as normal.

It seems to me that just about everyone here is in agreement but doesn’t even realize it: —The 15-day and subsequent 45-day shutdowns were unfortunate but necessary —We should try to gradually open things as soon as we can do so safely, and hopefully this can be sometime in May. We can’t just open everything at once and there will continue to be restrictions on larger gatherings, etc., until we have a therapeutic or vaccine. For all the back and forth debating, I don’t see any real disagreement on these points. I don’t see anyone saying that we should keep everything closed forever or that we should open everything immediately.

Of course. This is much worse than the flu.

What are we supposed to use? We can’t use total deaths, for obvious reasons. And we can’t use per capita either. Just because it makes us look better doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. Can we only use things that make us look worse?